NEC and Fujitsu complete Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE)

NEC Corporation and Fujitsu Limited have completed construction of all initially planned segments of the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) system, the two technology firms announced today.

ASE is a high-bandwidth optical submarine cable system that extends across approximately 7,800 km to link Japan with the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore.

According to a media statement by NEC, NTT Communications, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, Telekom Malaysia and StarHub placed an order for the new system in January 2011.

The IT and network technologies integrator said that the connection of Hong Kong to the system, in addition to Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia (already operational) means that ASE now connects major cities in East and Southeast Asia as a high capacity (40Gbps per wave, max capacity 15Tbps) submarine cable system employed in services offered by NTT Communications and other participating carriers.

NEC provided the submarine cables, submersible repeaters and submersible OADM branching units, as well as subsea monitoring equipment and power feeding equipment for the new system.

Fujitsu provided the Submarine Line Terminal Equipment and the Networking Management System.

Plans are in place to utilise the system to provide high-quality and low-latency dedicated line service that can also be leveraged for the carriers' cloud services, NEC said in its announcement.

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